Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Boris Johnson urges 'thorough' Tomlinson inquiry

Following the shocking Guardian footage of the events leading up to Iain Tomlinson's death, a spokesperson for Boris Johnson has released the following statement:

"It is very regrettable that a man has died and the Mayor extends his condolences to Ian Tomlinson's family. The video footage which has come to light is clearly disturbing and the Mayor is taking this matter very seriously. Kit Malthouse, the Deputy Chair of the MPA, is meeting the IPCC tomorrow to urge them to ensure a speedy and thorough inquiry."

Policing of the G20 demonstrations was a joint operation between the Met and the City of London police.

Questions now need to be asked about the statement put out by the Met shortly after Tomlinson's death.

12 comments:

Nick
said...

Why on earth is Kit Malthouse meeting the IPCC? Boris Johnson is the Chair of the Authority and should be the one there, demanding a full Inquiry as well as telling the Police Commissioner to demand answers.

The first question that needs to be answered is who is the police officer who pushed Mr Tomlinson to the ground? On the TV news last night, the commentator said that it was not clear whether the officer was from the Met or City of London Police. But that policeman knows who he is and the other officers with him know who he is as well. He must come forward immediately.

Nobody is suggesting that this was a deliberate act, but the family are entitled to know precisely what happened and if the officer doesn’t come forward voluntarily, then it gives the impression that the police have something to hide.

"Liberal Democrat colleagues at Westminster have rightly called for a inquiry into the death of Ian Tomlinson but there also has to be a thorough inquiry in to the overall policing tactics adopted throughout London during the G20 summit. The failure to fully address these issues could undermine public confidence in policing which will take years to recover.

"As a Member of the Metropolitan Police Authority I am demanding a number of questions are answered by the Met about their strategy and tactics, from their media campaign in the run up to G20 right through to the actions they adopted last Thursday. A full review needs to happen."

DCMD: the experience over the Menezes case does not inspire confidence that the policeman responsible will be brought to justice. The police have a history of closing ranks over things like this. How this is dealt with will be a big test of the new police commissioner.

Boris had better promise that the lessons of the G20 debacle are learnt for his army of 10,000 Specials he announced for the Olympics the other day. I'm sure we'd all benefit from them not being taught crowd control by the Met Riot Squad.

The first thing we should note that this is not the Menenez case repeating itself. This was, I'm afraid to say, typical behaviour from the Met on these occasions. In fact, to be honest, from my experience of witnessing riot squads in action, this was very mild indeed.Had the poor unfortunate victim not have died, the vast majority of people out there would not have had a clue as to how the police behave when it comes to crowd control. It's very simple: if you're in an area, you're a fair target, plain and simple.As always, it will be the wrong enquiry. It will be into the actions of one individual (did he use excessive force? did he know the man had a heart condition? - as if demonstrators need to carry medical reports).There will be no enquiry into policing methods and this is detrimental as it is obvious that the police did during those demos have to deal with small groups who were intent on destruction, as opposed to the vast majority who wished to protest about the policies and practices of the City of London. The only thing I can conclude that this is normal police behaviour, not that of an indisciplined individual - maybe the video footage of ten minutes before that will be available to the enquiry to illustrate this point.